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Saturday, 11 July 2015

To celebrate the publication of 2 new books this week - The Innocence of Kaiser Wilhelm II, and The Goose Girl - and to thank the kind people
who have sent me messages and emails about these, I am making the first
book in my Shattered Crowns Trilogy - Shattered Crowns, The Scapegoats -
free on Kindle from July 12th -July 13th. Do feel free to avail
yourself of this book for free and it comes with all good wishes to you! I believe - and trust! - this applies to Kindle worldwide.

Thursday, 9 July 2015

For over a century Kaiser Wilhelm II has been viewed as either a madman or
a warmonger who brought his country to destruction by provoking the First World
War. Following the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, the Allies planned to
have him tried as a war criminal and only the refusal of the Dutch Queen and her
Government to extradite him prevented the planned tribunal from ever taking
place. Since then, though, he has largely been portrayed as guilty of the
charges that were levelled against him, as the century old propaganda continued
to be believed.

I am the granddaughter of an English
prisoner-of-war, and, as a tiny child, I listened often as my grandmother sang
sad war songs and told me of her brother who was killed fighting for the English
near Ypres in 1916. As I grew older, I spent years trying to make sense of a
conflict in which so many millions had died, but all I was taught left me even
more confused...particularly as I began to delve deeper into the life and true
character of Kaiser Wilhelm II. The more I discovered, the more I realised that
virtually everything I had been told about that war was false, and that, far
from being a warmonger or a madman, Kaiser Wilhelm had done his utmost to
preserve peace.

Until 1914, he was described as ‘The Apostle of Peace’ or the Peace Kaiser
who had spent his twenty-six reign attempting to improve the lives of his people
and to maintain good relations with his neighbours. Even on the eve of the war,
he was desperately seeking some means to resolve the international crisis which
had suddenly been blown out of all proportion following the murder of Archduke
Franz Ferdinand. He was the last of the European leaders to mobilise his army,
and as one American commentator observed he was ‘the most sorrowful man in the
world’ when he realised that war could not be avoided.

From the moment hostilities began, the British Bureau of Propaganda set out
to destroy his reputation, severely distorting his image and portraying him as
the instigator of the war. So successful was this campaign, that even today he
is widely viewed as a cruel son, a megalomaniac, and a tyrant, but I believe that, contrary to all we were told,
the truth is in reality quite simple, and I sincerely, with all my heart,
believe that Kaiser Wilhelm II deserves a far better reputation than that with
which he has been so cruelly saddled for over a century. In my book ‘The
Innocence of Kaiser Wilhelm II’ I hope I have succeeded in portraying him in far
fairer light.